The grain of mustard

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

When it comes to that 
grain of mustard seed …, the smallest of all seeds … [which became] a tree, so that the birds of the air [came] and [made] nests in its branches,
the commentaries really get their horticultural knickers in a twist! They draw attention to the fact that the seed of the mustard plant Salvadora Persica L. is not that small. They maintain that it is not evident that that plant even grew in first century Palestine. They debate how high even today that plant can grow. Is it a bush? A shrub? A tree? Does it grow to ten feet, or a little over twenty? And they assert that birds, whilst eating the seeds of Salvadora Persica L and sometimes using its leaves for shelter, do not use its branches for nesting. You may not be surprised to learn that I am minded to leave the horticultural debate to others. Rather, I am drawn to a vision mentioned in the Book of Daniel, to King Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of
a tree in the midst of the earth; … its height … great, …its top [reaching] to heaven, … visible to the ends of the whole earth. Its leaves were fair, and its fruit abundant, … and in its branches the birds of the air dwelt.
I am drawn to that vision of a world tree, a vision interpreted as pointing to Nebuchadnezzar kingdom, the tree signalling a kingdom so extensive and benign that it could and did care for all. I am reminded of the references in the Gospels to Jesus’ frequently likening the Kingdom of God to a great banquet. And I note the hyperbole evident in the parables with which this morning’s gospel reading begins. In the one case it concerns a tiny, tiny seed which grows into a huge tree, if you wish, into a world tree, in which all the birds of the air find refuge; and in the other case, it tells of a small quantity of old, fermented dough which leavens, not just one, nor two measures of flour, but three. Small though the quantity of leaven was, it yet leavened enough flour to provide a meal for more than a hundred people, enough flour for the bread for a great banquet, for a messianic feast.

Such hyperbole, it seems to me, draws our attention ineluctably to a vital truth about the Kingdom of God, namely that, although its end is a great and glorious kingdom, its beginning is very humble. For remember, the kingdom of heaven began in God veiled in flesh, in God’s gracious self-abasement, in a life in which Godhead is eclipsed – in the very last hours of that life, in helplessness and nakedness, in the agony of the cross, abandoned by even his closest followers, the One whose kingdom the Kingdom of Heaven is appeared to be the very antithesis of everything that the world understands by kingship. It began there; but it will not end there. For the One who in that humble beginning was veiled in flesh never ceased to be God, never ceased to be the Lord, the King, the Sovereign One, the One whose kingdom never faileth. As the mustard seed became a tree, and as a small amount of leaven leavened the whole lump, so the Kingdom of God, present but eclipsed in the incarnate One, in the end and at the end is the Measure of all things and all people.

Given such, our attention, I would suggest, is then being drawn this morning not to either the humble beginning of the Kingdom of God, or to its glorious end, but to both, to two seemingly incongruent mysteries, set side by side. Despite all appearances, between, on the one hand, the small beginnings – the mustard seed, the leaven, the veiled Godhead – and, on the other, the grand culmination – the world tree, the leavened whole, the glorious kingdom – there is a unity. For the end is in the beginning. God’s glorious kingdom is in God’s veiled Kingdom. For God, the King of heaven, is the same, whether lying in a manger or seated at the right hand of the Father. 

And, if that is the case, I would urge you to acknowledge that the genuine, even if, at times, inconspicuous presence of the Kingdom of God in the life, words and works of Jesus is an earnest and a pledge of the glorious Kingdom to come. And, if that is the case, I would further urge you, whatever else you may take away from this morning’s gospel reading, to take this away: because of him who came amongst us, the incarnated pledge and earnest of the Kingdom of heaven, we may have confidence that, through God’s mercy and faithfulness, our prayer that our Father’s kingdom may come, on earth as it is in heaven, will come.

The mustard seed and the leaven would teach us that the Kingdom’s coming on earth, both in our separate, individual lives and in our corporate life, will come. More often than not it will come quietly, unspectacularly, gradually. For God’s future in us began in Christ, in a manger and on a cross, at a font and in bread broken and wine spilt at an altar like this one. But it will come. And, if we will but allow it, it will increasingly come more gloriously, simply and solely because the God, whose Kingdom it is, is the same, yesterday and today and forever, because the God, whose Kingdom it is, has given us his pledge that it will come.

So, delight even now in the earnests of God’s coming kingdom, in the small acts of kindness shown to us by neighbour and stranger, in forgiveness extended to us, even, especially when the wrong which we have done is a wrong which we have done so casually and so repeatedly, in mercy granted when we have withheld mercy, in truths graciously accommodated to our little but often petty, proud minds, but, above all, in the earnests, the pledges made present in bread and wine in this eucharist, at this altar, this morning. Delight in these earnests and pledges. But always also look forward to the Kingdom’s ever more glorious coming in our very midst, on earth, here in Oxford as it is in heaven.
Thanks be to God. 
Amen.